Oh, this time change and i are not getting along. That, and/or pollen season is affecting me at some soporific level, and/or i'm just tired.

This morning, delicious with rain, i haven't awakened until the pre time change time, despite the best efforts of my alarms. Admittedly, my alarms are not designed to jolt me awake. I have a recording of a Hindu chant (that was circulate as the Dali Lama chanting) that is a low drone. That is configured to start very quietly to slowly wake me instead of a jolt. It works nicely, usually, but this week isn't going very well.

I fly to Ohio next week and i am not excited about more time change.

Maybe there won't be pollen, though.

I checked the flowers from my Panoche trip in the fridge last night: they don't look much worse for wear, all things considered. I've not gotten out for a walk in days and haven't looked at the back log of images, and there are these blossoms that will not last! Please, please, motivation and energy, return to me!

This low energy is also making it hard to practice morning and evening habits, too. I am unclear as to how to proceed here, with travel next week. Habits are hard for me. I wonder if it's a slight ADD tendency.

Although, this reminds me of how i notice particular number and letter confusion and ponder dyslexia. A label doesn't help. Although... maybe in this case reading how ADD/ADHD folks manage to develop habits would give me insight into my own challenges.

But instead of going off and researching ("Squirrel!"), let me think: the main thing i want to do is focus on the end of work and evening ritual of listing things for the next day. Let's just set ONE challenge for these next ten days: end of work and end of day, tidy up the to-do list and schedule.

This year's time change seems to have been hard on a lot of people. I usually don't have much of an issue, but this year I felt totally disrupted. Even LTC was late to a meeting last night and he is NEVER late. He lost track of the time because it looked earlier than it was.

Habits - well. I don't have any. I don't remember to brush my teeth. I take pills only by laying them out a week in advance and having the pill case sitting practically on the laptop where I check my mail. I don't remember to exercise. I remember to feed the cat because she insists. I take timed meds by setting alarms on my phone. I make lists. I write daily lists in a notebook, and trip lists on a Post-it that I stick in the car when I go out. Today's says "Printing, bank, library pickup, pu/Rx, K veg" and I have about a 75% chance of getting through it. Assuming, of course, that the list gets to the car. And dyslexia - I didn't realize it was a serious problem until I tried to learn Korean. Now I understand why my visual memory is so good - dyslexic brains over-develop the visual skills to compensate for the difficulty with numbers and letters. I used to teach parents multiple organizational techniques for their ADD kids but always ended with the warning, no matter how good the system is, it will fail. It may fail for a few days, or it may even be a complete washout. Then you need to start a new system. It too will fail eventually, There is no permanent solution. This is life here in ADD land. The way I have coped is forgiveness. I know people won't believe me when I say I can't . . . whatever they want me to do faithfully, I don't care any more. I understand my realities, cope as best I can, and don't beat myself up for "failures" - because those failures are just me not fitting into someone else's schema of who I should be.

Forgiveness and compassion are the best coping mechanisms: i wish i had learned them earlier. Better late than never!

I skimmed some google hits on ADD/ADHD and habits and found (much like when i skimmed advice about coping with dyslexia) there wasn't much that struck me as a new insight. (Oh, to have had some of this help while in school or college!)

Our current cats DON'T insist about feeding: what's up with that? It means i forget and Christine has to nag me. Hmph.

ADHD folks do tend to do well doing as you suggest: working on one simple thing at a time, and hammering it down until it's trivial and easy, and then moving to the next thing. Trying to create too many habits at once can be a recipe for disaster.

After that, there's a lot of individuality. One ploy I liked was to use disconnectedness to create horrible consequences if X went undone. This tended to make it easier to remember. Not horrible consequences like "and then I'll get fired!" Horrible consequences like "and then the evil mad scientist will be able to create the bionic dinosaurs and take over the world!"

That is a fun way to remember! Does it help with motivation? It's hard for me to sort out how much of what i need for change is motivation or skills (like remembering). My motivation does seem to evaporate after, oh, 10 am.

It doesn't quite help with motivation in the "do I have energy to do this?" sense but it does help with motivation in the "Oh, that's right, I *should* do this..." sense. Of course, "help" doesn't mean "supply, in bounteous quantities" but life is unfair that way.